Should I engage in gold cyanidation or heap leaching business?
I am mining license holder in East Africa and I am thinking to invest into gold cyanidation or heap leaching business.
I have heard that expenses of cyanide and activate carbon are high. Many people are buying tailing heaps and investing into gold cyanidation.
My plan is to invest into gold cyanidation.
Are there any alternative methods?
Introduction to gold cyanidation
The gold cyanidation process or gold cyanidation and also known as MacArthur-Forrest process, as written in the book “The MacArthur-Forrest Process of Gold Extraction, by J.S.MacArthur from 1890 on 14 pages is meant to extract gold from low-grade ore by dissolving the gold with cyanide and filtering it with activated carbon.
Citizens of East Africa shall cautiously consider all pitfalls and benefits of the gold cyanidation process and preferably get consulted by foreign metallurgist as not to repeat the same mistakes of neighbors.
Sample unforeseeen or unexpected and surprising difficulty
Here you may see the picture of Mr. Jean Louis on the gold cyanidation plant, in particular the plant with pool leaching.
The pools on the left and right side of Mr. Louis there were inspected and found to leak water and fluids. That means the pools were built poorly and were not verified to be water proof prior to the gold cyanidation process.
Tanzanian “experienced” miners have sold their “services” to the Ugandan license holder and have helped him build these very expensive pools for gold cyanidation.
Not only they have built it incorrectly, they failed to verify that pools must be water proof.
Funds were invested to purchase the tailing, cyanidate and activated carbon. Just a fraction of gold about less than half a kilogram was recovered while other several kilograms of gold went straight into the ground.
Together with the poisonous cyanide that is polluting the plants, animals, and fish in the nearby river Okame.
In the end, due to lack of funds, and garbiage product, the plant owner have stopped the production for several years. As of this writing we do not know when would this continue again.
There are many unexpected and unforeseen difficulties to expect
Gold cyanidation for a common man is very risky business.
This is especially true for gold mining business holders in East Africa.
Number one to understand is that for business like tailing processing, and you are in business of tailing processing, you need to have:
your own laboratory tools
knowledge and skills to determine what material you have and to determine gold particles that you have
to know if gold particles are enough separated or not and because if they are not separated, you would need to finalize separation before any processing,
then to know if you can handle those particles by any other efficient and least expensive methods
Gold cyanidation plant owners are not having complete laboratory tools, often they lack the educated laboratory technician knowing his job, they often engage into gold cyanidation business without even knowing the size of particles they are handling, and without helping them to fully separate before the processing.
Unspoken of high and often exaggerated pricing of cyanide and activated carbon.
Many gold cyanidation plant holders do not even know that activated carbon may be reactivated for the fraction of the cost of purchase of new activated carbon.
And even less people know that activated carbon may be self-made directly on the plant.
There are numerous ways to lessen the expenses of gold cyanidation in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya or Zambia, Rwanda, Congo and neighboring countries.
But people are failint to find out why and how.
There are numerous various leaching processes
There are numerous various gold cyanidation and other type of chemical heap leaching processes.
And what about heap leach pads?
Most modern heap leaching is done by using what? Pools? Tanks? No!
The modern heap leaching is done by using heap leaching pads.
Example plants may be seen on this link: https://www.xrgeomembranes.com/applications/heap-leach-pads
And what about gold ore preparation?
So often miners are simply purchasing the tailing heaps, bringing those to their heap leaching pools, and simply going on with the overall very expensive gold cyanidation process.
It is expensive because miners DO NOT have certain capabilities:p
they don’t observe the particles sizes, so they are leaching the particles larger then they should be without preparation of the tailing materials,
they don’t have the perfect chemical process to actually leach all the gold so in the end the tailing they have been using is again sold to larger company which does have the perfected cyanidation leaching method,
Example of a successful cyanidation process.
On this video one may see a good example of gold cyanidation plant:
The tailing is prepared by grinding it through the ball mill so to get particles smaller than 70 mesh size.
Any larger particles are immediately circulated back into the ball mill until they become smaller than 70 mesh in size.
Professional process is used that takes only few days, and all gold is recovered.
Assignment for thinking and further considerations
By answering the following questions a businessman may consider and think better twice before investing into the inefficient gold cyanidation plant.
what does it mean low-grade ore?
what concentration of gold is considered low-grade ore?
what concentration of low-grade ore the original gold cyanidation process is meant for? What would be the minimum that is profitable?
and what grade of ore can you profitable process with your envisioned gold cyanidation plant?
Compare the above answers to find out if you are missing some important capabilities before investing into the gold cyanidation and heap leaching processes.
Then ask yourself:
what is the low-grade that was intended and is still intended in true cyanidation processes of today at professional companies?
are you able to handle the low-grade ore that professional companies are handling with your process?
or are you going to loose the gold?
Compare the answers to above questions for your own considerations and conclusions.
Then ask yourself following:
what is the price of cyanide per tonne, for you, in your own country?
what is the price of activated carbon per tonne, for you in your own country?
have you ever tried to find out the price of cyanide in other countries so that you import it yourself?
Compare the above answers and if you have never tried to research the market, you are probably paying three times the prices of raw chemicals.
Then ask yourself following questions:
do you have the opportunity to reactivate the activated carbon after the usage?
do you have opportunity to make the activated carbon by yourself? What would you need for that?
did you think to comminute the ore? Why is this step necessary?
The verb comminute has 1 sense (no senses from tagged texts): 1. grind, mash, crunch, bray, comminute – (reduce to small pieces or particles by pounding or abrading; “grind the spices in a mortar”; “mash the garlic”), reference to WordNet dictionary.
Compare your results from above. Find out why would you need to prepare the ore, and why other people are not doing it. What are they missing?
Then ask yourself following questions:
why is oxidation of the ore necessary during the cyanidation process?
did you take in plan any oxidation processes?
And compare the results.
In general if you don’t have the book The MacArthur-Forrest Process of Gold Extraction, from 1890, as written by J.S.MacArthur you are most probably missing the fundamental knowledge on gold cyanidation.
Unspoken of many modern books written on the subject of gold cyanidation process.
Those questions and your answers may give you clues if the gold cyanidation is something you should undertake, and if you undertake it, if you would be doing it right.
I have seen many gold cyanidation plants in Tanzania and in Uganda.
Majority of people are having wrong process, with high expenses, with the risk to be blocked to operate in case of trouble.
Watch your expenses
Don’t let your gold cyanidation process become more expensive then Compare that to these people here:
Those people have very small operation and they are also handling tailings.
But their operation cost is very little.
It is the fraction of the cost that you have to handle the tailings with gold cyanidation.
Think about it.
If somebody who does not have funds can do it better and more efficient then you, then you must know that you are doing something wrong.
Gold cyanidation can be very efficient process.
Do not just replicate what is not efficient and what your first neighbor is doing.
Obtain books and documents, call skilled metallurgists from other countries to help you.
Invest in the knowledge so that you really know what you are doing and how.
Otherwise a simple sluice can be good enough to process tailing heaps.
Contact us to Start Your Own Gold Mine
Contact us to Start Your Own Gold Mine. There is a simple rule at Start Your Own Gold Mine: if we can help you, we do, whenever and wherever necessary, and it's the way we've been doing business since 2002, and the only way we know
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